Legend:

A newtype is a new algebraic datatype that wraps up exactly one field (in our example, of type `Int`). Yet, the semantics of Haskell makes a guarantee that wrapping and unwrapping a value (with `MkAge` or `unAge`) has no runtime cost. Thus, internally, we must consider `Age` to be wholly equivalent to `Int`.

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The problem with this idea comes with type families. (There are other ways to tickle the bug, but one example is enough here.) A type family can branch on ''Haskell'' type, and of course, in Haskell (unlike in the internals of a compiler), `Age` is most certainly ''not'' `Int`. (If it were, newtypes would be useless for controlling instance selection, a very popular use case.) So, in our example, we see that `Inspect Age` is `Int`, but `Inspect Int` is `Bool`. Now, note the type of `bad`, the method in class `BadIdea`. When passed an `Int`, `bad` will return a `Bool`. When passed an `Age`, `bad` will return an `Int`. What happens on the last line above, when we use GND? Internally, we take the existing instance for `Int` and just transmogrify it into an instance for `Age`. But, this transformation is very dumb -- because `Age` and `Int` are the same, internally, the code for the `Age` instance and the code for the `Int` instance are the same. This means that when we call `bad (MkAge 5)`, we run `5` through the existing implementation for `bad`, which produces a `Bool`. But, of course, the type of `bad (MkAge 5)` is `Int`, and so we have effectively converted a `Bool` to an `Int`. Yuck.

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The problem with this idea comes with type families. (There are other ways to tickle the bug, but one example is enough here.) A type family can branch on ''Haskell'' type, and of course, in Haskell (unlike in the internals of a compiler), `Age` is most certainly ''not'' `Int`. (If it were, newtypes would be useless for controlling instance selection, a very popular use case.) So, in our example, we see that `Inspect Age` is `Int`, but `Inspect Int` is `Bool`. Now, note the type of `bad`, the method in class `BadIdea`. When passed an `Int`, `bad` will return a `Bool`. When passed an `Age`, `bad` will return an `Int`. What happens on the last line above, when we use GND? Internally, we take the existing instance for `Int` and just transform it into an instance for `Age`. But, this transformation is very dumb -- because `Age` and `Int` are the same, internally, the code for the `Age` instance and the code for the `Int` instance are the same. This means that when we call `bad (MkAge 5)`, we run `5` through the existing implementation for `bad`, which produces a `Bool`. But, of course, the type of `bad (MkAge 5)` is `Int`, and so we have effectively converted a `Bool` to an `Int`. Yuck.